HP Officejet Pro 8630 e-All-in-One

BY M. DAVID STONE

With its 500-sheet paper capacity, the HP Officejet Pro 8630 e-All-in-One ($399.99) is clearly aimed at micro and small offices or workgroups with unusually heavy-duty print needs. More expensive than some laser multifunction printers (MFPs), including the HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M177fwBest Price at Amazon, this inkjet MFP is meant to go toe-to-toe with low-end laser MFPs and come out on top. This very capable machine can be a great fit in a small office that can take advantage of the high paper capacity.

The 8630 offers almost any feature you can think of for an MFP. Its core functions include the ability to print and fax from, as well as scan to, a PC, including over a network, and also work as a standalone copier, fax machine, and email sender. In addition, it can scan to, and print from, a USB memory key, and it supports mobile printing as well.

If you connect it directly to a network by Wi-Fi or Ethernet, you can print to it via a Wi-Fi access point on your network using AirPrint with iOS devices or HP’s free print apps with iOS, Android, and BlackBerry devices. Assuming the network is connected to the Internet, you can also print through the cloud and take advantage of HP’s Web apps. Even if you don’t connect it to a network, you can use the printer’s Wireless Direct—HP’s proprietary equivalent to Wi-Fi Direct—to connect directly with, and print from, a smartphone or tablet.

The MFP also lets you print using near-field communication (NFC), but the support is more limited than you might expect. The NFC Touch-to-Print feature in the 8630 is a new standard. According to HP, the only mobile device it will work with at this writing is the HP ElitePad 900$468.99 at Amazon. If you don’t happen to have one, the printer’s NFC support is useless.

The good news is that NFC Touch-to-Print is defined as part of the new standard from the Mopria Alliance, a group that includes HP, Canon, Samsung, Epson, and Xerox, among others. The feature should become more useful over time, as more mobile devices come out that support the standard.

Paper Handling
The 8630 earns lots of points for paper handling, starting with its 500-sheet capacity, divided into two 250-sheet paper trays. If also offers a built-in print duplexer (for printing on both sides of a page) and, for scanning, both a legal-size flatbed and a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF) that can duplex as well.

Being able to both print and scan in duplex lets you copy from both single- and double-sided originals to your choice of single- or double-sided copies. You can also scan, fax, or email both simplex and duplex documents. Even better, the 4.3-inch front-panel color display offers a particularly well-designed menu to make it easy to find and change settings.

Not surprisingly, given the legal-size flatbed and the 500-sheet paper capacity, the 8630 is bigger and heavier than most inkjet MFPs, measuring 15.7 by 19.7 by 18.5 inches (HWD) and weighing 35 pounds. It’s also a little too big to share a desk with comfortably. Assuming you have room for it, however, setup is pretty straightforward.

Speed and Output Quality
For my tests, I connected the printer using its Ethernet port and installed the drivers on a Windows Vista system. On our business applications suite, I clocked it (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing) at an impressive 5.9 pages per minute (ppm).

That makes the 8630 a lot faster than some low-cost color laser MFPs. The HP M177FW, for example, managed only 2.9 ppm. On the other hand, it’s not unusually fast for a business-oriented inkjet. The Editors’ Choice HP Officejet Pro 276dw MFP$282.00 at Amazon in particular tied the 8630 at 5.9 ppm. Both inkjet MFPs also did well for photo speed, at 48 seconds for the 8630 and 50 seconds for the HP 276dw.

Output quality is best described as easily good enough for business use, but not impressive. Text quality falls in the middle of the range that includes the vast majority of inkjets, making it good enough for most business use, unless you have an unusual need for small fonts.

Graphics quality is similarly good enough for most business use, but at the low end of the tight range where most inkjets fall. Unless you’re a perfectionist, the quality is good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photos in my tests were standard for an inkjet, making them easily a match for drugstore prints.

If you need better output quality, you’ll want to take a look at the HP Officejet Pro 276dw MFP. It not only offers better looking output, particularly for text, but it matches the HP Officejet Pro 8630 e-All-in-One’s speed and its support for the PCL printing language, while also adding Postscript, which is essential in some offices. That said, if you don’t need the extras that make the HP 276dw our Editors’ Choice, and your print needs are heavy-duty enough to make good use of a 500-sheet paper capacity, the HP Officejet Pro 8630 e-All-in-One can be an excellent fit, and may be the better MFP for your needs.

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Xerox Phaser 6600/N

BY M. DAVID STONE

Basically the same printer as the Xerox Phaser 6600/DN$474.99 at OfficeDepot, but without a duplexer (for two-sided printing), the Xerox Phaser 6600/N ($549) color laser printer offers the same capable paper handling, along with solid output quality across the board. Like its near-twin, it’s a little on the slow side. However, it’s a good fit for a small to medium-size office or workgroup that doesn’t need duplexing, needs to print a lot of pages by small-office standards, and needs the output to look good.

Literally the only difference between the 6600/N$403.19 at pcRUSH.com and Xerox 6600/DN is the lack of a duplexer. That means that if you don’t need automatic two-sided printing, you can save about $100 by getting the 6600/N. But before you buy it, be absolutely sure you don’t need to duplex. Xerox doesn’t offer an upgrade to let you add the feature later.

The printer’s paper handling is otherwise a match for its duplexing doppelgänger. It comes with both a 550-sheet drawer and 150-sheet multipurpose tray standard, which is enough for heavy-duty printing in a small office. If you need even more capacity, you can add a second 550-sheet drawer ($299) for a total of 1,250 sheets. Not so incidentally, the 550-sheet capacity for the drawers is a welcome convenience. It lets you refill the drawer with an entire ream of paper even before it’s fully empty.

Setup and Speed
As you’d expect for any printer with this level of paper capacity, the Phaser 6600/N is too big to comfortably share a desk with, at 15.1 by 16.9 by 19.2 inches (HWD). It also weighs a touch over 56 pounds, which makes moving it into place a two-person job for most. Once in place, however, setup is both simple and typical for a color laser.

Connection options include the expected Ethernet and USB ports, with an optional Wi-Fi adapter ($99) also available. The only mobile printing support is for AirPrint, which requires a Wi-Fi access point on your network, whether you connect the printer itself by Wi-Fi or Ethernet. I connected the printer by its Ethernet port and ran my tests from a Windows Vista system.

Xerox rates the printer at 36 pages per minute (ppm) for both monochrome and color, which is the speed you should see when you’re printing files that require little to no processing. On our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic’s hardware and software), it came in at a much slower 4.5 ppm. That’s essentially a tie with the Xerox 6600/DN, which came in at nearly the same speed for both duplex and simplex modes.

As a point of comparison, the Editors’ Choice Xerox Phaser 6500/DN$350.00 at Amazon was faster even in duplex mode, at 5.2 ppm, and much faster in simplex mode, at 6.5 ppm. Less important for an office printer, but still worth pointing out, is the fact that the 6600/N was unusually slow for a color laser for photos, averaging 45 seconds for a 4 by 6 in our tests.

Output Quality
Given speed that’s best described as tolerable but a little slow, it helps a lot that the output quality is good enough to be worth waiting for. Text is at the low end of the range where the vast majority of color lasers fall, but that’s still good enough for any business use. Depending on how critical an eye you have, you may also consider it acceptable for moderately serious desktop publishing. Graphics quality is on par for a laser, making it more than good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like.

Photo output on plain paper was at the high end of the range you can expect from a color laser. If you mounted most of the color photos from my tests in a frame behind glass, you’d have trouble telling that they weren’t true photo quality and printed on photo paper. I would rate the photos, along with the text and graphics, as good enough for printing your own marketing materials like tri-fold brochures or one-page handouts and mailers.

The Xerox Phaser 6600/N’s strongest points are its paper handling and output quality. If you don’t need the high paper capacity, the Editors’ Choice Xerox Phaser 6500/DN will give you essentially the same output quality with faster speed for $150 less. If you need the high paper capacity plus duplexing, the Xerox Phaser 6600/DN is the obvious alternative. If you print enough to take advantage of the high capacity, however, but you don’t need duplexing, and especially if you need high-quality output, the Xerox Phaser 6600/N could easily be the right printer for your office.

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Xerox Phaser 6500/DN

BY M. DAVID STONE

Theoretically identical to the Xerox Phaser 6500/N$318.16 at pcRUSH.com, but with a print duplexer (for two-sided printing) added and with a faster speed on our tests, the Xerox Phaser 6500/DN color laser printer ($499) delivers an impressive balance of speed, output quality, and paper handling, making it a potentially excellent fit in a micro office, small office, or workgroup, and an easy Editors’ Choice for color laser printers.

As with the 6500/N, an obvious point of comparison for the 6500/DN$362.62 at pcRUSH.com is the directly competitive Dell 2150cdn, which it replaces as Editors’ Choice. The three printers are similar in many ways, with all three built around the same engine and all three rated at 24 pages per minute (ppm) for both monochrome and color output. But where the Xerox 6500/N lacks the duplexer the Dell 2150cdn offers, the 6500/DN adds the duplexer and delivers faster speed as well. Note, too, that the 6500/DN includes support for AirPrint, which Xerox has added to the 6500 series firmware since I tested the Xerox 6500/N.

The printer’s paper handling is easily enough for most micro or small offices or workgroups, with a 250-sheet tray, a one-sheet manual feed, and a duplexer standard. For heavier-duty needs, you can also add a second 250-sheet tray ($199), making the 6500/DN a good choice for moderate- to heavy-duty printing by small-office standards.

Setup and Speed
As is typical for the breed, the 6500/DN is too big to share a desk with comfortably, at 16.4 by 15.9 by 16.8 inches (HWD). It’s also heavy enough, at 40 pounds, so you’ll likely want some help moving it. Once in place, however, setup is standard fare. For my tests, I connected it to a wired network, and installed the driver on a system running Windows Vista. Note too that if you prefer to connect wirelessly you can add an external Wi-Fi option ($219).

The printer’s speed is both a key strong point and a pleasant surprise. Like many duplex printers, the 6500/DN’s driver installs to print in duplex by default, so the official speed for our tests is for two-sided printing. On our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’shardware and software for timing) I clocked it at 5.4 ppm.

That makes the 6500/DN essentially tied with the Dell 2150cdn, at 5.5 ppm. However, the Dell printer’s speed is for printing in simplex (one-sided) mode. When I set the 6500/DN to simplex, it came in significantly faster, at 6.5 ppm. Somewhat surprisingly, the 6500/DN in simplex mode was also significantly faster than the Xerox 6500/N, at 5.2 ppm. The difference was entirely due to the 6500/DN printing a PowerPoint file faster, which suggests it offers faster, more efficient processing for that file format.

Output Quality
The 6500/DN’s output quality isn’t as impressive as its speed, but it’s easily good enough for almost any work need. Text in my tests was at the low end of the range where the majority of color lasers fall, but even then, it’s high enough quality for almost any business use. Depending on how critical an eye you have, you may consider it suitable for moderately serious desktop publishing. Graphics quality was on par for a color laser, making it suitable for anything up to, and including, PowerPoint handouts. Most people would consider it good enough for marketing materials like one-page handouts or trifold brochures.

Photo quality on plain paper was at the high end of a tight range where most color lasers fall. If you mounted the color photos in our tests in a frame behind glass, they could pass for true photo quality.

Note that the Dell 2150cdn offers somewhat higher output quality, particularly for text, and it may still be your preferred printer if your primary need is absolutely top-tier quality. Alternatively, if you can do without a duplexer, the Xerox 6500/N will give you very similar capability to the 6550/DN. As already discussed, however, it was slower than the 6500/DN in our tests. And for most offices today, the lack of a duplexer can be a significant liability, which is why the 6500/DN earns a higher rating.

All told, the Xerox Phaser 6500/DN’s balance of speed, output quality, paper handling, and price makes a compelling argument for the printer, and the combination is enough to make this color laser printer an Editors’ Choice.

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Dell B2375dnf

BY M. DAVID STONE

Meant for light- to medium-duty use in a mid-size office or workgroup, but also a good fit for heavy-duty use in a small office, the Dell Mono Multifunction Printer – B2375dnf delivers on both multifunction printer (MFP) basics and convenience features, like its touch-screen control panel. It isn’t as fast on our tests as you might expect from its 40 page-per-minute (ppm) rating. In fact, the Editors’ ChoiceOKI MB471, is faster despite a slower rating. The Dell printer is fast enough, however, so speed shouldn’t be an issue, and it offers enough overall to make it a potentially good choice.

The B2375dnf starts with a full set of MFP basics. It can print and fax from as well as scan to a PC, including over a network, and it can work as a standalone copier, fax machine, and direct email sender. It can also print from and scan to a USB memory key. Even better, it’s 4.3-inch touch screen and menus make it reasonably easy to use for copying, faxing, and email, although the touch screen is a little less responsive than it could be for scrolling through the choices.

Paper Handling and Other Basics
Paper handling is a big part of what limits the printer to light to medium-duty use by mid-size office standards. It comes with a 250-sheet paper drawer, a 50-sheet multi-purpose tray, and an automatic duplexer (for two-sided printing) standard. You can also add a 520-sheet second drawer ($149.99 direct), for a total 820-sheet capacity. If you need more than that, however, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Paper handling for scanning is similarly one step short of being suitable for heavy-duty use. The letter-size flatbed is supplemented by a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF), which can handle up to legal-size paper for copying, scanning, faxing, or email. Even better, the ADF can duplex, by scanning one side, turning the page over, and then scanning the other.

Combined with duplex printing, the duplexing ADF lets you copy both single and double-sided originals to your choice of single or double-sided copies, which is obviously a welcome convenience. However, it isn’t as desirable, or as fast, as scanning in duplex, meaning both sides of the page at once.

One other notable convenience is mobile printing support. If you connect the printer to your network, you can both print through the cloud (assuming the network is connected to the Internet) and print over Wi-Fi from iOS and Android phones and tablets (assuming you have a Wi-Fi access point on your network).

Note that the printer itself doesn’t offer Wi-Fi. If you want a printer that can connect wirelessly, you can get the Dell Mono Multifunction Printer – B2375dfw, which sells for the same list price. According to Dell, the two models are otherwise identical, which means almost all of the comments in this review should apply to both. Keep in mind, however, that printing over Wi-Fi will probably give you a different speed than printing with the Ethernet connection I used for testing.

Setup, Speed, and Output Quality
As is typical for this class of printer, the B2375dnf is far too big to share a desk with comfortably, but small enough, at 18.8 by 18.2 by 16.5 inches (HWD), so you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding room for it even in a small office. Setting it up on a network, with drivers installed on a Windows Vista system, was standard fare.

As I’ve already mentioned, the printer was slower than expected in my tests. Dell rates it at 40 pages per minute (ppm), which is the speed you should see for text documents with little to no formatting. I clocked it on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing), at just 5.9 ppm.

As one point of comparison, when I reviewed the OKI MB471, which is rated at 35 ppm, I pointed out that its 9.5-ppm speed on our tests qualified as respectable, but not particularly impressive. Other printers do far better compared with their ratings. The 24-ppm Canon imageClass MF4770n, for example, came in at 12.3 ppm on our tests.

Output quality for the B2375dnf is absolutely typical, with text, graphics, and photos each falling within a tight range that includes the vast majority of mono laser MFPS. For text, that translates to being easily good enough for virtually any business need, but a little short of what you’d want for serious desktop publishing applications.

Graphics output is similarly good enough for any internal business need. Depending on how critical an eye you have, you may also consider it good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photos are good enough for printing recognizable images from Web pages, which is about as much as you can expect from a mono laser.

Also demanding mention is that the B2375dnf offers other useful conveniences, including private printing, for example, which lets you send a job to the printer, but not print it until you enter a password through the front-panel touch screen.

If what you need in a printer is fast speed, high input capacity, or above-par output quality, you’ll obviously need to look elsewhere. What keeps this printer in the running, however, is its long list of conveniences, from private printing to scanning to a USB key, along with its full set of MFP basics—for printing, scanning, copying, faxing, and email. If you need those MFP features more than raw print capability (meaning speed, output quality, and paper handling), the Dell Mono Multifunction Printer – B2375dnf can be a highly attractive choice and could easily be the right fit for your office.

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Dell C2660dn

BY TONY HOFFMAN

As a color laser printer suitable for a small office or workgroup, the Dell Color Printer | C2660dn showed good speed and above-par output quality thanks to stellar graphics, and has competitive running costs and a generous paper capacity for its price. All this makes it easy to recommend for a small business looking for a workhorse color laser.

The all-black C2660dn measures 14.9 by 17.3 by 19.1 inches (HWD) and weighs 56.5 pounds. It’s a little too large to share a desk with, a monochrome display, four arrow controls with a central Enter button, and an alphanumeric keypad for entering choices as well as for password-protected Secure Print, which requires a user to enter a PIN to release a print job.

and you may want 2 people to move it into place. The front panel has

The C2660dn’s paper capacity of 400 sheets, split between a 250-sheet main tray and a 150-sheet multipurpose feeder, is generous for its price, and it comes with an automatic document feeder for printing on both sides of a sheet of paper. It has a maximum monthly duty cycle of 50,000 pages, with a recommended monthly duty cycle of 3,500 pages. An optional 550-sheet tray ($185.99 direct) is also available.

The C2660dn offers USB and Ethernet (including Gigabit Ethernet) connectivity. Wi-Fi is available as an option ($99.99 direct). I tested it over an Ethernet connection with the printer’s drivers installed on a PC running Windows Vista.

The C2660dn integrates with the new Dell Document Hub, which enables users to print documents from many cloud platforms, including Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive and Microsoft SharePoint Online. Use of Dell Document Hub is free until March 2014.

Printing Speed
I timed the C2660dn in its default duplex (two-sided printing) mode on our business applications suite (using QualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing) at an effective 6.5 pages per minute (ppm), a good speed for its rated speed of 18 page per minute for duplex printing (for both color and monochrome). Rated speeds are based on printing text documents without graphics or photos—our test suite includes text pages, graphics pages, and pages with mixed content. Although our official timings are in the default printing mode (duplex, in this case), I also timed it in simplex mode (for which it’s rated at 28 ppm), where it turned in a slightly faster 6.8 ppm, the same speed at which we tested the OKI C531dn$436.78 at pcRUSH.com. It’s faster than the Editors’ Choice Dell 2150cdn$302.13 at Amazon, and it edged the Samsung CLP-680ND$349.99 at Amazon, which I timed at 6.2 ppm.

Output Quality
Overall output quality was a plus for a color laser, with average text quality, above-par graphics, and photo quality on the low side of average. Text was suitable for typical business applications short of demanding desktop publishing applications and the like that use very small fonts.

Graphics quality is fine for PowerPoint handouts, even ones meant for important clients I was seeking to impress. Colors were well saturated, although a few darker backgrounds looked somewhat blotchy. Dithering in the form of dot patterns was apparent in some illustrations.

With photos, colors were well saturated. Some images showed a loss of detail in bright areas, and dithering (graininess) was evident in others. I also noted some mild posterization, the tendency for abrupt shifts in color where they should be gradual. A monochrome image was tint free, but the background was blotchy and showed traces of banding. The quality is good enough for in-house use, printing photos from Web pages and the like, but whether it’s suitable for outputting photos for a company newsletter depends on how picky you are.

Running Costs

The C2660dn’s running costs of 2.3 cents per monochrome page and 12.8 cents per color page are the same as those of the Dell 2150cdn and comparable with the OKI C531dn (2.4 cents per monochrome page and 12.3 cents per color page). Its monochrome costs are the same as the Samsung CLP-680ND, though the Samsung costs nearly a penny more per color page (13.7 cents).

Like the C2660dn, the Samsung CLP-680ND has good graphics quality and they have similar text and photo quality, but the C2660dn beats it in speed and paper capacity. The C2660dn matched the OKI C531dn in speed and has a slightly higher paper capacity (400 sheets to the OKI’s 350). The C2660dn had better output quality, for graphics and photos.

The C2660dn is a bit faster than the Editors’ Choice Dell 2150cdn, and has greater paper capacity. Although its overall output quality is good for a color laser thanks to its great graphics, it could not match the Dell 2150cdn’s. Due to its high-quality output (if, for example, you want to bring the printing of basic marketing materials in house), the Dell 2150cdn remains the color laser in its price range to beat. But the C2660dn offers a well-rounded feature set, good paper capacity and speed, competitive running costs, and output quality that should be good enough for most in-house business needs. All that could make it worthy of a place on your business’s short list.

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Xerox Phaser 3610/N

BY M. DAVID STONE

Basically the same printer as the Xerox Phaser 3610/DN Printer$621.41 at pcRUSH.com that I recently reviewed, the Xerox Phaser 3610/N Printer offers all the same features except one. Unlike the DN model, the 3610/N doesn’t duplex (print on both sides of the page). If you need to duplex, or even think you might need to duplex, ever, that rules the 3610/N out, especially since you can’t add a duplexer to it as an upgrade. If you’re sure you’ll never need to duplex, however, it will give you all the same capability as the DN model otherwise at a slightly lower price.

Like its duplexing near twin, the 3610/N is designed as a workhorse mono laser for a small to mid-size office or workgroup. Aside from the lack of a duplexer, it’s particularly strong on paper handling, with a 550-sheet main tray and 150-sheet multipurpose tray standard, and the option to add up to three additional 550-sheet trays ($199.99 direct each) for a maximum 2,350 sheets. It lacks any output options, like a finisher or stacker, but the input capacity is enough for heavy-duty use by small to mid-size office standards.

Setup and Speed
The printer measures 12.4 by 15.5 by 16.8 inches (HWD) with its standard complement of trays, and it weighs in at 28.7 pounds, which makes it light enough for one person to move into place. Beyond that, setup for the 3610/N is typical for the category. I connected it to a wired network for my tests and installed the drivers on a Windows Vista system. You can also connect by USB, with Wi-Fi available as an option ($99.99 direct).

Xerox rates the 3610/N at 47 pages per minute (ppm), which should be close to the speed you’ll see with text or other files that don’t require much processing. On our tests, however, I clocked it at 12.0 ppm (usingQualityLogic’s hardware and software for timing). That’s a tie with the 3610/DN in simplex (single-sided) mode and a little faster than the 3610/DN in its default duplex mode, at 11.1 ppm.

Unfortunately, both printers are a little slow for the price and engine rating. The Editors’ Choice Dell B3460dn$649.99 at Dell Small Business, came in at 15.3 ppm, for example, and the less expensive Editors’ Choice Dell B2360dn$249.99 at Dell hit 15.0 ppm.

Output Quality and Other Issues
The good news is that as with the Xerox 3610/DN, the 3610/N largely makes up for its slow speed by offering somewhat better than par output quality overall.

Text quality is good enough for virtually any business need, which, for most offices, is the most important quality issue for a mono laser. Graphics quality is at the high end of par, making it easily good enough for any internal office use. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, it’s also potentially good enough for PowerPoint handouts and the like. Photo quality is easily above par for a mono laser. Many people would consider it good enough for photos on output like one-page handouts with photos.

Also on the plus side for the 3610/N is a low claimed running cost, at 1.7 cents per page, and several potentially useful conveniences, starting with mobile printing.

The mobile printing support includes printing through the cloud and printing over Wi-Fi from an iOS or Android phone or tablet. To use either feature, the printer has to be connected to your network. In addition, the network needs to be connected to the Internet for cloud printing, and you need an access point on the network for printing over Wi-Fi. Adding the Wi-Fi option to the printer doesn’t eliminate the need for an access point, since the optional Wi-Fi doesn’t support Wi-Fi Direct.

Two other noteworthy convenience features are private printing (which Xerox calls secure printing), and the ability to save jobs in the printer. With private printing, you can send a job to the printer, and it won’t print until you enter a PIN code through the front panel menu. This can be handy if you’re printing something you don’t want others to see.

Saving jobs to the printer lets you store pages, like forms that need to be filled in repeatedly, so you can print them quickly and easily with front panel commands. Note that with the basic version of the printer, the forms are stored only in standard memory, however, so you’ll lose them if you turn the printer off. For the feature to be truly useful, you need to add the optional Productivity Kit ($349.99 list), which saves the files to non-volatile memory.

One minor issue is that the menus on the front panel aren’t as straightforward as they could be, making it hard to find some options quickly. However, you can easily print a Menu Map page, which shows you exactly how to navigate to the option you’re looking for.

As with its duplexing doppelganger, the Xerox Phaser 3610/N Printer delivers on paper capacity, low running cost, better than par output quality, and convenience features like mobile printing and private printing. Not being able to add a duplexer later means that if you have any question about ever needing to duplex, you’ll be better off paying a little extra for the Xerox Phaser 3610/DN Printer, or an equivalent model that also has a duplexer. If you’re sure you’ll never need to duplex, however, the Xerox Phaser 3610/N Printer is a more than reasonable choice.

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HP Designjet 3D Printer Now On Sale

By Clay Dillow

Remember back in January when HP announced it would bring a tabletop 3-D printer to market, at a place and time to be named later? That place and time just became a quite a bit less ambiguous. Today Stratasys, the company that is manufacturing the device for HP, announced that it has shipped the first units of the HP-branded Designjet 3D fabrication machines, which will be available in May — but only in Europe.

The Designjet 3D is based on Stratasys’s Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technology, which turns three-dimensional CAD drawings into tangible prototypes by extruding partially molten ABS plastic in extremely fine layers one atop the other, forming the entire 3-D model in a single piece from the ground up. Designjet 3D will print in ivory-colored plastic only while Designjet Color 3D will print single-color parts in up to eight different colors (we’re not sure why you can’t just put a different hue of ABS plastic in the Designjet 3D).

Aimed at businesses large and small as well as educational institutions and individual inventors, the idea is to offer a point of entry into 3-D printing for those who want to prototype in-house directly from their computers. That kind of convenience can save a lot of time and money on product development, but it also comes with a sizeable up-front cost.

In our earlier coverage to speculated that the price of HP’s printer would come in under $15,000 — the price of a similar printer recently released by Stratasys. But HP today announced that the Designjet 3D would retail starting at less than €13,000, or just under $17,500. Which means the price of entry into the 3-D club may still sit somewhere between unfeasible and pie-in-the-sky for many garage-shop hobbyists.

But the HP printer, by all appearances, seems to have one thing going for it that many commercially scaled systems do not — ease of use. A Designjet in the corner of the office would allow architects, engineers, product developers and the like to carry an idea through from concept to prototype without leaving their desks, culminating in a plastic 3-D model that they can put in the hands of higher-ups or prospective clients. It beats the alternative method of producing up various detailed drawings that are carefully crafted into a prototype by a skilled (and expensive) machinist, a process that can be a suck on time and budgets, especially if designers don’t get it exactly right the first time.

And, lest ye forget, while $17,000 is a big chunk of cash, Designjet 3D is still among the most affordable rapid prototyping systems out there for its size and capability. There are other options – the open-source, DIY MakerBot kit costs less than $1,000 and prints in the same material – but you have to build it. As far as something off-the-shelf is concerned, you’re not likely to do a whole lot better.

What’s really going to define whether the Designjet is a big step forward for 3-D printing is the quality of the prototypes, which we’ll surely hear much more about in coming weeks as the product hits desktops in the UK, Spain, France, Italy and Germany. For those of you not lucky enough to be in those inaugural markets, worry not; rest assured Designjet will be prototyping globally soon enough.

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